John Ashbery and the arts

Edited by

Thomas Devaney

Marcella Durand

Quiet Moon

No comfort in the dead windAnd its loud philosophizing;The glumly repeated eyeletsTease me with hushed reproach,And snores of my friends and loversTell me “last night was just that.”Ah, solitary night! Except for my goofballBaby next to me — no snoring there, not yet,But that won’t matter amid the irregularScreams tomorrow morning. It’s weird how upsettingExtreme calm can be; it won’t let you think:The rumpus of natural silence, the frenzyOf immobility, not like last nightWhen the woods burbled, and fire crackledThat is now still as a still photograph.I still have to undress. What is goofballThinking — dreaming that his absent-minded MamaIs humping his cradle? Surely something close to home.I used to stare at that photograph for signsBut they pointed only to what had been, not toGetting out of my lovely bed next morning, when the bellsSing of the amusement park’s opening, or my going downTo redistribute my joy, even pretending to takeMy schoolbook seriously, which I can barely seeThrough my tears; also zipping up my mother’s back,Waiting for the unknown person who will take me away.Beloved Goofball! You fill in my voids.You’d better like this place, with its firs and fish,Not like my Manhattan where the only landscape’s in the sky(And in worn municipal parks): before I was twentyI never saw a redbud with its leafless purple flowers,All that stuff out there adds up; you have to think,Out there is better than the dream in your head,Than the dreamers in the ministry of fear;But don’t forget that we are a vulnerable lotWith death by slaughter, fire, or frost hanging over us,About whom judgments will be made at high tablesTo no doubt become our only trace.

For this Jacket2 feature, Thomas Devaney and Marcella Durand convened a number of poets, scholars, and artists to consider John Ashbery and the arts: roaming through dance, theatre, poetry, music, translation, and essay, the materials in this collection push at the outer description of the word “art” while tracing correspondent lines to Ashbery’s own work.

John Ashbery on PennSound

You'll find an extensive collection of John Ashbery recordings — including readings, interviews, lectures, and radio appearances — from 1951 to the present on his PennSound author page, including the poet’s two appearances as a Kelly Writers House Fellow in 2002 and 2013. A text-sound alignment of Ashbery’s iconic poem, “The Skaters” can be found here.